ByteDance-Owned Instagram Rival Lemon8 Hits the US App Store's Top 10 (techcrunch.com) 11
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As U.S. lawmakers move forward with their plans for a TikTok ban or forced sale, the app's Chinese parent company ByteDance is driving another of its social platforms into the Top Charts of the U.S. App Store. ByteDance-owned app Lemon8, an Instagram rival that describes itself as a "lifestyle community," jumped into the U.S. App Store's Top Charts on Monday, becoming the No. 10 Overall app, across both apps and games. Today, it's ranked No. 9 on the App Store's Top Apps chart, excluding games. This is a dramatic move for the little-known app and one that points to paid user acquisition efforts powering this surge. Prior to yesterday, the Lemon8 app had never before ranked in the Top 200 Overall Charts in the U.S., according to app store intelligence provided to TechCrunch by data.ai.
The firm confirms that such a fast move from being an unranked app to being No. 9 among the top free apps in the U.S. -- ahead of YouTube, WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook -- implies a "significant" and "recent" user acquisition push on the app publisher's part. Unfortunately, because the app is so new to the App Store's Top Charts, third-party app analytics firms don't yet have precise data on Lemon8's U.S. installs, or how those installs have recently changed over the past few days. [...] According to app intelligence provider Apptopia's data, Lemon8 debuted on both iOS and Android in March 2020 and has since gained 16 million global downloads, with Japan as its top market, accounting for 38% of its total installs. While the firm also doesn't have a figure for its U.S. installs, it was able to estimate the app currently has 4.25 million monthly active users. TechCrunch believes ByteDance may be leveraging TikTok to drive app installs of Lemon8. "Over on TikTok, we noticed a number of creators recently began posting about Lemon8, with many new videos appearing in just the past 24 hours," reports TechCrunch. "Concerningly, many of their reviews are extremely positive but are not marked as sponsored content. [...] In fact, some creators even said they're getting the app in case TikTok gets banned."
The firm confirms that such a fast move from being an unranked app to being No. 9 among the top free apps in the U.S. -- ahead of YouTube, WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook -- implies a "significant" and "recent" user acquisition push on the app publisher's part. Unfortunately, because the app is so new to the App Store's Top Charts, third-party app analytics firms don't yet have precise data on Lemon8's U.S. installs, or how those installs have recently changed over the past few days. [...] According to app intelligence provider Apptopia's data, Lemon8 debuted on both iOS and Android in March 2020 and has since gained 16 million global downloads, with Japan as its top market, accounting for 38% of its total installs. While the firm also doesn't have a figure for its U.S. installs, it was able to estimate the app currently has 4.25 million monthly active users. TechCrunch believes ByteDance may be leveraging TikTok to drive app installs of Lemon8. "Over on TikTok, we noticed a number of creators recently began posting about Lemon8, with many new videos appearing in just the past 24 hours," reports TechCrunch. "Concerningly, many of their reviews are extremely positive but are not marked as sponsored content. [...] In fact, some creators even said they're getting the app in case TikTok gets banned."
Integrate with Lightroom or no sale (Score:5, Interesting)
If Lemon8 supports camera users, I would be open to considering it (assuming there's no privacy issues). It's an underserved market, although seems to be shrinking...a huge reason because it's a PITA to post a real photo and trivial to post photos from your phone. Meta was dumb to alienate camera users in Lightroom and Facebook, especially with their diminishing marketshare and engagement. If they were smart, they would be encouraging small niches of enthusiastic users...it's trivial to support an API and even build a plugin to Lightroom or other editing software. However, Meta was always a lazy company...only wanted low-effort high reward stuff...no long-term vision...and now they're paying the price...easy come, easy go.
Meta chased fashion, excluded everyone else, and now are no longer fashionable and tanking as a company...there's a lot to be learned from their rise and fall and I hope, for ByteDance's sake, they forge a new, smarter path, instead of just replicating Meta's mistakes.
Re:Integrate with Lightroom or no sale (Score:5, Informative)
You're kinda right (Score:5, Interesting)
Cameras don't record as much information in the photo as a phone does, so it's not as easy to track and monetise what you're doing.
Good point, but I think they can still get what they want, both from my activity as well as having me view everyone else's. They can't track where I took the photo, but they can track every time I log in and check likes and messages posted, plus I used to engage with the site and follow friends and be active. And regardless, this is a market scenario...They're welcome to make decisions I think are hostile and I'm welcome to completely stop using Instagram...which I did once they broke the plugin. My friends and family were shocked. I used to post 3x a week pics of my kids I took with a real camera and suddenly never logged in ever again. Consuming instragram didn't provide enough value to me to compete with the millions of better things I can do with my time. I suspect this fate will befall all social media platforms...it's fun for a few years, the thrill wears off...and in order to continue engagement, you need to actually provide value AND a pleasant experience.
In the beginning, most of us loved facebook and Instagram...I loved facebook to connect with past friends...then my asshole relatives joined and started posting hateful posts and logging in became depressing....so I stopped using it. I put up with their shittiness at first because it was novel and fun. Once it wasn't, why bother? I loved Instagram at first when I could use it the way I wanted...the changed that, I realized I didn't enjoy it THAT much and found better things to do. I imagine a similar fate will befall Lemon8. I hope, for their sake, they show more appreciation of their users than Meta ever did.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure they're communists and they're polluting the minds of our young people with videos of people dancing and such.
Re: (Score:2)
Instagram compresses the hell out of everything. The image quality is far, far worse than Twitter, for example.
I've been trying out Pixelfed, but the image quality seems to depend on the particular instance you are using (it's decentralized).
Forced sale grounds for deposing government? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Remember the whole mess in Iran started after the CIA installed a dictator in retaliation for Iran nationalising British and American oil interests. Do you really want to tempt China to follow in your footsteps?
Re: (Score:2)
FALSE - Iran's successive governments SOLD the mineral rights to the British and subsequently welshed on the deal.
It was Islamic double dealing and outright theft of those minimal rights that started all the issue. The British and CIA did nothing wrong by supporting leadership who recognized the legal rights to those mineral resources by British and American parties to the agreements of the late 19th and early twentieth century.
Were it not for those thefts we would have been tampering with their governance
Re: (Score:2)
So you had a lucrative business, and then those double-dealing Iranians pulled out out from under you, so it was fair game to overthrow their government. Now China has a lucrative business, and
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When the deal was specifically WITH the government YES.
Also nobody is depriving bytedance of property. They will still own TikTalk and all the source code, trademark rights, etc to it. They can take it and market it anywhere else in the world that will have them.
The situation IS NOT THE SAME